Pharmakon – ‘Bestial Burden’

Pharmakon - 'Bestial Burden'

Score

Sonic body horror influenced by agonising pain

On the eve of a European tour, Margaret Chardiet awoke stricken by agonising pains. It wasn’t nerves, but a cyst that required immediate surgery. It’s an experience that’s fed directly into the New Yorker’s second album, a bleak excursion in clanking noise loops, sculpted feedback and vocals that might be patched in from an operating theatre running low on anaesthetic. Short on melody, absent of light, ‘Body Betrays Itself’ and ‘Primitive Struggle’ aren’t for the squeamish. This is that rare music that genuinely deserves the descriptor ‘visceral’: sonic body horror that comes on like avant-garde composer Diamanda Galas scoring David Cronenberg.